Jack Rivlin is the editor of The Tab, an online tabloid for students which is "neither clever nor funny", according to the Guardian. He is a former Evening Standard news reporter. You can find his earlier posts here

Student unions – the killjoy bureaucrats of the future

There’s only one clan worse than young politicians: student union apparatchiks. Backed by a tiny mandate and drunk on power only they believe exists, they while away a 35 hour week reading the Leveson report and ordering personalised fleeces.

Who elects this joyless lot? No one really – about eight per cent of UEA’s student body voted in the polls which propelled them to office. Community and Student Rights Officer Sam Clark (elected by 4.5 per cent of the student body), explained how students would know about the debate where the measure was passed: "A Union blog post was published, and a bulletin was sent by E-rabbit, an email system from the Union students can sign up for."

Far be it from me to throw stones at Sam and co’s blog from my glass house, but did he really think that was sufficient publicity? Given only 584 people bothered to vote for him as a first preference, you’d hardly expect the rugby and cricket fans to be signing up to an e-bulletin.

This is typical – rather than lowering the price of a pint or organising a party, they take out their flimsy sixth-form politics on their peers. As turnout suggests, most undergrads are content to ignore the busybodies. But every now and then, the killjoys tire of building ‘gender neutral’ toilets (what happened to unisex?) and use their speck of influence to change something.

It never seems to be something popular though. For self-styled representatives, they side against carefree students an awful lot. Take the NUS (the National Union of Spoilsports), which campaigned to increase the minimum price of drinks, one of the few issues students do have a view on.

Unions aren’t the voice of students, they are a mouthpiece for sandal-wearing prigs. They mimic radical policies, but all they really stand for is the suburban gloom of the Local Government administrator. Have a student union by all means – someone’s got to organise Fruitarian Awareness Week and campaign for lower fees. But let’s stop them there.